"Girl Reading," by Charles Edward Perugini
One of the many fun things about being on the Whitney Awards organizing committee is seeing all the nominations come in and organizing them by genre. Why do this, you might wonder, and what exactly is a genre, anyway?
I'm here to tell you.
A genre is a category of literature (or music, or other art form) that is defined by certain characteristics. I'm going to restrict my comments to prose fiction genres--as opposed to those of drama, prose non-fiction, and poetry, for example. Why? Because I know them best. (Go consult Tyler or my cousin Javen for help with poetry, and Jeff or Javen could help you with drama.)
Among other advantages, knowing a book's genre helps a writer define and sell it to her agent, who then can turn around and do the same for an editor at a publishing house, who then can do the same for her sales force, who then can do the same for bookstores and libraries. Then the clerks and librarians can organize books on the shelves so that readers can find what they want.
But a writer should know her genre long before her novel is ready for marketing. Each genre has different goals, and the audiences for each have different expectations. Knowing how to meet those goals and expectations is crucial for writing success.
Genre, like language itself, is a fluid concept that changes over time. Here are many of the most popular fiction genres and subgenres of prose fiction:
Romance is one of the oldest fiction genres, and romance novels make up almost 40% of all books sold in the United States. Romances are recession-proof; in fact, a 2009 New York Times article reported that when the recession hit, romance fiction sales actually went up. Romances are the most favored method of literary escape.
As defined today (and for the past 40 years in the publishing business), a romance has a "Happily Ever After" ending. A book may have significant romantic elements--take Gone With the Wind or One Day, for example--but without an ending in which the hero and heroine are blissfully ensconced in one another's arms (literally or figuratively), it is not a romance. Gone With the Wind is a historical novel; One Day is women's fiction, simply because it has romantic elements but ends tragically.
Sub-genres of romance include historical romance, paranormal romance, inspirational romance, contemporary romance, and romantic suspense. All of these have several sub-subgenres as well.
With romances, there is a continuum of sexual content, ranging from "sweet" at the G-rated end to "spicy," "hot," and "erotic" at the other extreme. And contrary to proverb, you can tell a lot by the cover. How clothed are the hero and heroine? It's an excellent indicator of what's inside.
What are the romance writer's goals? Since most of her readers are women, she wants to create a heroine with whom the reader can identify, a hero with whom the reader can fall in love, and a story that shows that love will triumph over all obstacles. The reader knows the story will end well; it's the how that will carry her to another world.
Romance writers I love include Diana Gabaldon and Mary Balogh (spicy) and Jane Austen and Annette Lyon* (sweet).
The novel I'm writing at the moment is a paranormal romance with historical and time-travel elements, and it is an utter blast to write. I hope it will be as fun for my readers.
Mystery is easy to define, right? A crime has been committed, and the protagonist finds out who did it and why. Subgenres of mystery include culinary mystery (like Josi Kilpack's Pumpkin Roll*, pictured above, which I'll be reviewing here next week), historical mystery, courtroom drama, and police procedurals--but, as with romances, the subgenres are nearly infinite.
In the same way that there is a sexual content continuum in romance, a violence/gore continuum exists in the mystery genre--from cozy to dark.
I love mysteries by writers like Josi, Umberto Eco, Timothy Hallinan, and Elizabeth George.
Historical fiction is also easy to define once you know its parameters. It's fiction that is set roughly 40 years or more before the time the author is writing. Pride and Prejudice is not historical fiction, because Jane Austen set it in her own time. In contrast, Sir Walter Scott wrote Ivanhoe in 1819 but set it in the 12th century. It therefore qualifies as historical fiction.
Some of my favorite historical fiction writers are Sharon Kay Penman, Dean Hughes*, Dorothy Dunnett, and Peter Ackroyd. Kathryn Stockett's The Help is historical fiction, but a case can be made for categorizing it as women's fiction as well.
Speculative Fiction is my wheelhouse. It has three main subgenres: fantasy, science fiction, and horror. I could write an entire post about each of these--and their sub-subgenres, for that matter. As I've written before, speculative fiction asks, "What if?" If the novel's world departs from reality because of magic or myth, it's fantasy. If science is at the core of its otherworldly elements, it's science fiction. Fantasy and science fiction aim to create a sense of wonder, while horror focuses on creating a sense of fear.
Just to be extra confusing, the horror subgenres cross the gap between speculative and realistic; supernatural horror features demons or ghosts or evil aliens (as with Stephen King), while psychological horror often is about serial killers (as with Thomas Harris). Fear is the defining element. Horror readers crave the adrenaline surge that comes from putting oneself in virtual peril. Other than the aforementioned writers, other horror writers I avidly read are Dan Wells* and Peter Straub.
Fantasy subgenres include epic (think The Lord of the Rings), urban (Charles de Lint's Moonheart), paranormal (Twilight*), historical (Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell), and magic realism (Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale). I have many, many favorites in this genre other than those just cited, including C.S. Lewis, Brandon Sanderson*, Tad Williams, Dave Duncan, Terry Pratchett, George R. R. Martin (beyond spicy), Neil Gaiman, and Guy Gavriel Kay.
The Desolate, the completed novel I am shopping around at the moment, is dark (meaning that it contains elements of horror) contemporary (meaning that it is set in the present day) fantasy.
Science fiction genres include space opera (think Star Wars), dystopian (Ally Condie's Matched*), hard sf (Nancy Kress's Beggars in Spain), cyberpunk (Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash), and steampunk (Tim Powers's The Anubis Gates).
I could go on and on when it comes to genre. We could discuss the characteristics of Chick Lit and Suspense, Epistolary and Satire. We could talk at great length about YA, which has become a genre when it once was an age category. Ahh, books. So many wonderful ones, so little time.
Instead, I want to finish this post by mentioning how to define a novel that crosses categories. Some writers resist this, and I understand the impulse. It's no fun to be pigeonholed, and many writers successfully move from genre to genre with each book, or come up with groundbreaking combinations that create new subgenres.
For example one of my favorite speculative fiction novels, China Mieville's Perdido Street Station (spicy), is very difficult to categorize. Fantasy? Alternate History? Horror? Mieville is definitely forging his own path. Then there's Jeff VanderMeer's Finch (spicy), a cross between hard-boiled detective fiction (a mystery sub-subgenre) and dark fantasy.
But, at least from the standpoint of my current job on the Whitney committee, you have to put each book somewhere so that it can be judged against its peers.
Let's say you have a book like Rachel Ann Nunes's Imprints*, one of last year's Whitney finalists. It's a paranormal romantic suspense novel. Should it be classified as speculative, romance, or mystery/suspense? It's really hard to say without reading the book--and different readers come up with different answers. Imprints felt most like suspense to me; that was the part of the plot and theme that stood out most to me as I read it, but others felt that the speculative element was paramount. With tricky cases like these, the committee consults the author and the publisher, then takes a consensus and does its best.
All right, you'll have to excuse me. I'm plumb in the middle of one of this year's Whitney nominees, and I'm burning to see how it ends. While I'm gone, have you recently read a great novel by an LDS writer that was published in 2011? If so, go here and nominate it for a Whitney Award. Happy reading, everyone!
* Some of the many successful LDS writers being published today